A Sea of Blood and Magic

Chapter Three

The food, predictably, sent us both to sleep again. I didn't wake up until the guards came to bring me dinner.

Once more, Nik was already wide awake by the time the noise forced my eyes to open. I guessed something about his biology must be less susceptible to the sedatives. Too bad the genes from my mom didn't work that way.

I reached for the food, but he stopped me. "Hold on." When I paused, he shrugged. "Let's talk before we eat."

An asinine blush crept over my face, as if he had just asked me out on a date. Pull yourself together, Hannah, I could hear my best friend Emma saying. She knew I was ridiculous around attractive people. "Okay. Um, sure. What do you want to talk about?"

"When they took you out of here, did they blindfold you?" At my headshake, he smiled. "Cool. Tell me what you saw."

"Well, it's a pretty big ship. We're high up above the water. And it's definitely Navy, but I don't know if it's Royal, UP, or maybe NATO or something like that."

"Did you see a lot of sailors?"

Sailors. That's what they were. Not soldiers. "No. Hardly any."

This news seemed to surprise him. "Huh. All right. What else?"

"They took me up one flight of stairs to get to some group showers."

"Wait, stairs? Not ladders?"

"No, they were real stairs."

"That's weird." Nik's brow furrowed, as much as it could with the scales.

"How come?"

"It's just an unusual design for a Navy ship. I used to want to be a sailor, for the Navy I mean, back before I realized they'd test for terata."

He looked sad, so I tried to redirect the conversation a bit. "Did you always know you were a teras?"

His voice was thin and pained, but he answered without hesitation. "Part teras, and yeah. I knew. It's why my dad ditched me and my mom. She knew she was half apsara, but she didn't care because in India, it's not that big a deal. She didn't even think to mention it to my dad, and he didn't know he was one-half neck."

I giggled. "Is that like a halfback, only more turnable?"

He gave a huff of laughter. "No, like I said, they play the violin, and live in whitewater rapids."

"Seems like the water'd be bad for the violin," I dared to tease.

With a halfhearted smile, he shrugged. "Probably magic. I don't know. Anyway, they supposedly seduce women. They also shapeshift. So the first time my dad changed my diaper, and I didn't match what he'd seen before, he freaked the hell out."

"Whoa." My eyes widened. "That would be kinda weird."

"My mom thought it was cool, but she doesn't understand Provincial attitudes, sometimes." Nik sighed. "My dad made his mom tell him the truth about his bloodlines, and then he just... disappeared. They couldn't even find him to make him pay child support."

His dad sounded like a real piece of work, but you couldn't say that out loud. "I'm sorry. You must've been really sad."

"Nah, I never knew him. He left before my first birthday. My mom never got over it, though. Her parents offered to let her come home, and we did for a while, but she had better job offers in the Dominion. So, she came back to California."

"Where are you from?"

"Valle de las Delicias del Corazón."

My jaw dropped. "Are you serious? That's so far from Ciudad Daedelus! They must have practically flown to get you to the harbor by the time they captured me."